Europe's high-flying women gear up to wear the trousers

By Lewine Mair

12:01AM BST 01 May 2003

A new breed of powerful women golfers has been unleashed on the land - lawyers, consultants and an assortment of high-flying businesswomen. Yesterday they were at Stoke Park Club for the launch of European Women's Golf Network, an organisation who will encourage the same business-related golf beloved by men.

At a time when much is being made of those golfing institutions who refuse to admit women, Nick Green, the owner of EWGN and MacDuff Golf, has cheerfully made it plain that his organisation will not be admitting men. "As I see it," he said, "men and women are perfectly entitled to have their own organisations."

It was Green's American wife, Barbra, who suggested that it was time something was done for businesswomen golfers, established players as well as the beginners who will have their first day at Stoke Park on May 16.

Initially, Green tried to link in with the 17,000-strong Executive Women's Golf Association in the United States but, when that body explained they had no international aspirations, he and his partner, Patrick Cunningham, decided to go it alone. Callaway wasted no time in coming on board, as did Inkerman, providers of company gifts.

Sally Hindley, an Inkerman director who used to manage Nick Price, the former Open champion, agreed with Green's view that women would do better to build up their own clubs rather than batter their way into the male-only arena.

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"Women are bashing their heads against a brick wall if they think they are going to get into places like the R & A and Muirfield," Hindley said in a comment which might serve to make the relevant women more determined rather than less.

Hindley was once a member of a club in Suffolk - "one with a 'Royal' prefix" - where the women's entrance was at the back of the clubhouse. "How off-putting is that?" she asked.

Another Hindley observation was that the older-established golf clubs seldom go out of their way to make single women feel welcome. "They're only comfortable with husbands and wives," she maintained, in a statement which drew a knowing nod from many of her sister golfers.

Sue Mappin, the former Wightman Cup tennis player, had no problem in contributing to the debate on the second-rate treatment that has been meted out to women in golf across the years.

While she happily adhered to keeping the ball inside the lines on a tennis court for the first half of her life, she was incensed to arrive at a certain golf club where women could not step over a white line painted across the clubhouse floor.

Going back to the days when she managed women's tennis in Britain, Mappin recalled an occasion when the Lawn Tennis Association staged a golf day for management and clients.

When she got there and discovered that she, Joyce Hume and Jo Durie were being sent out together at the end of the field, she wanted to know why. She thought the whole point of the exercise was that people should mix.

The answer she received was along the lines that it would be a pity to spoil the men's day.

Mappin, who plays her golf at Burhill - nowadays a discrimination-free zone - has just started her own website for those looking to work in the sports industry (www.jobswithballs.com). She says that the European Women's Golf Network could have been made for her.

"I've networked with three people already and it's only 11 o'clock!" she said, before heading out for the day's 18 holes.

Mappin's first position when she retired as a tennis player was as a coach, a role in which she eventually landed the top job on the women's side of the LTA.

Of all her pupils, none was arguably more successful than Sara Gomer, a 6ft 2in left-hander who, when her playing days were done, advertised via a dating agency for "a sports-loving millionaire over 6ft 3in".

A member of the Palumbo family with the requisite qualifications sent in his reply and the two are now happily married and living in Washington.